A lawsuit filed on Friday, September 18, 2026, alleges that four major artificial intelligence developers entered an unlawful agreement to intentionally slow the pace of technical advancement. The complaint, submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, names Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceXAI as defendants.
The legal action follows a September 12, 2026, essay published by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, which called for collective industry efforts to prioritize safety measures over rapid progress. The lawsuit alleges that subsequent endorsements of these proposals by executives at Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and SpaceXAI constitute collusion that violates federal antitrust laws.
According to the filing, mutual pledges among competitors to ensure their timeline is slower than competition would otherwise produce has an anticompetitive effect. The plaintiffs are four individuals who pay for subscriptions to AI services including ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and Gemini. They are seeking to represent a nationwide class of paid subscribers, arguing that such agreements diminish the value of the services they purchase.
In his original essay, Amodei noted that cross-laboratory discussions might face antitrust hurdles. He suggested that it would assist if the U.S. government were to mediate these talks or at least enable them by issuing a narrow waiver for certain kinds of safety conversations. Responding to the proposal, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated the company supports a federal framework for safety requirements but argued that the company does not believe it needs to wait for antitrust exemptions to begin safety work.
The lead attorney for the plaintiffs, Nick Rowley, stated that "AI will quickly spin out of human control and could kill us all if we allow AI safety and protocol ... to be controlled by private self-serving agreements between the world’s most powerful ‘for profit’ technology companies."
The case addresses whether safety-led deceleration is a violation of antitrust laws. As of Saturday, September 19, 2026, representatives for the four companies had not yet responded to requests for comment.